About Stavrakiz

Sometimes all you need is a song to forget everything. One that takes you somewhere else for a few minutes and makes you feel something real. That's what I'm always trying to get to when I make a record. I don't think there's a perfect song out there, but I do think there's a song for everyone, the one where you hit play and the noise in your head just quiets down for a while. That's the thing I'm thinking about every time I walk into the studio.

I make organic house, and for me that word is less a genre than a way of working. I start with something acoustic, a stringed instrument, a hand drum, a voice recorded close, and then I let electronic space grow around it. Middle Eastern melody is where I come from, so those scales and that sense of longing find their way into almost everything I write. African rhythm is what taught me patience: the groove does not need to shout, it needs to keep walking until the room follows it. Somewhere between those two things, between afro house weight and a slow melodic pull, is the sound I keep chasing.

My ideas usually arrive far from a studio. In streets and souks, in a market where four rhythms happen at once, in a long drive at dusk, in the quiet after everyone has gone home. I record those moments on my phone and come back to them later, and the best tracks I have made all started from a fragment like that instead of a plan. I never try to make a record sound clean. I try to make it sound like a place.

I was lucky enough to release music on Lavenir Music, Cosmic Awakenings, Qualista, YHV Records, Chakra Records, and Café De Anatolia, Organic House Records while receiving support from artists I genuinely look up to, Kahani, Fka Mash, Lemurian, Diass, Kasango, Unders, Drush, AIWAA, Dr Parnassus, Alex Twin, Hot Oasis, Citizen Deep, DJ Phellix, Ben & Vincent, Rialians on Earth, Billy Esteban, Mark Di Meo, and Chris IDH. Hearing my tracks in their sets still feels unreal to me, and it keeps me honest about the work.

For me, music has never really been about making something perfect. It's about creating a moment.